The Church had another reason for making the Jew the business man. The representatives of the Church--fine psychologists that they were and still are--knew that as long as the Jew confined himself to agriculture he would continue to be "stubborn and stiff-necked," and no Christian propaganda would induce him to give up his religion. The peasant is the conservative element of society. The tradesman, however, whose business it is to make bargains and compromises in his business life, is always inclined to make compromises in morality and religion. If the Jews were made tradesmen, so the leaders of the Church thought, two aims could be achieved at one stroke. First they would be made to do the "dirty work" for the Christians, and secondly, their conservative Jewish spirit would be broken. These were the reasons why the Christian world consciously forced the Jews into commercialism. On the other hand, political conditions in the Middle Ages actually compelled the Jews to take to commerce. Thus a people, originally agricultural, became commercial. It is clear that the Jews are not a business people by nature but out of necessity and by reason of historical developments. But now another question arises: Are the Jews clever as a business people and do they really show an inherent business genius? The anti-Semites and many of our friends believe that every Jew is potentially a business genius. Is this true? This question is also best answered by facts. In Eastern Europe, where industry and commerce are not developed, and where Jews live in masses, the ordinary Jew is not a business man. On the contrary, the ordinary Jew in the East is a skilled or unskilled laborer. Out of the million Eastern Jews, who emigrated to this country from 1899-1908, about 60 per cent were laborers. The great masses or Eastern Jews in America are, in the main, laborers. As Eastern Jewry forms the bulk of the Jewish people, there is no reason to think that the modern Jew is _eo ipso_ a business man, or a tradesman. The great Jewish Socialist movement likewise testifies to the fact that the Jews are not a business people in the sense used by our enemies and by many of our friends, because a Socialist movement cannot rise and flourish among business people.